There is a terrific section in Doris Lessing's Golden Notebook about old lefties and Stalin. Written in the '50s, it is a relentlessly brilliant novel about feminism, politics and madness. One of the central characters, Anna, is a writer who earns her keep on a communist newspaper. Her readers are a literary bunch. They keep sending her short stories accompanied by neat letters asking if they might be suitable for publication. They tend not to be – but she identifies a deep unspoken angst which is their determining theme.